Serve these mini-baguettes with really ripe brie, baguette with tomato mozzarella and basil or vacherin cheese for a simple yet decadent lunch. Start mixing on a slow speed, gradually adding the rest of the water until you have a smooth dough. This should take about five minutes.

Tip the dough into an oiled bowl, cover and leave the dough to prove for two hours. Tip the dough out onto an oiled surface. Dust your hands in a little flour and divide the dough in two. Knock back the dough and stretch and fold, and then roll the dough into a baguette shape.

Place on a baguette tray or a large baking tray, cover and leave to prove until it has doubled in size. Gas 7 in a non-fan oven. Just before baking, slash the top of each baguette three times. Bake the baguettes for 30 minutes. Gas 6 and cook for 10 minutes. The baked baguettes should be golden-brown and have a slight sheen to them.

A less direct link can be made with deck or steam ovens. These combine a traditional gas-fired oven and a brick oven, a thick “deck” of stone or firebrick heated by natural gas instead of wood. France to determine who made the best baguettes. Nearly 200 bakers compete each year in front of a 14-judge panel following strict guidelines. They are judged based on baking, appearance, smell, taste, and crumb. 4000 and supplies France’s president with their daily bread for that year until a new winner is chosen.

Following the World Wars, French bakers began baking a whiter, softer baguette that contrasted with the darker loaves produced because of rationing during the wars. These doughs took less time to ferment and used more additives but had significantly less taste. They also began using pre-made dough and molds. Because the history of the French baguette is not completely known, several myths have spread about the origins of this type of bread. Some say Napoleon Bonaparte, in essence, created the French baguette to allow soldiers to more easily carry bread with them. Since the round shape of other breads took up a lot of space, Bonaparte requested they be made into the skinny stick shape with specific measurements to slide into the soldiers’ uniform. Other stories credit baguettes as being an invention to stop French metro workers from having to carry knives that they used to cut their bread.

The workers often fought, so the management did not want them to carry knives and requested that bread be easily ripped apart, ending the need for knives. The skinny, easily rippable shape of a baguette would have been the response to this. Some believe baguettes were the “Bread of Equality” following a decree post-French Revolution requiring a type of bread to be made accessible to the rich and poor. Another account states that in October 1920, a law prevented bakers from working before 4 am, making it impossible to make traditional round loaves in time for customers’ breakfasts. Switching from the round loaf to the previously less-common, slender shape of the baguette solved the problem because it could be prepared and baked much more quickly. It is forbidden to employ workers at bread and pastry making between ten in the evening and four in the morning.

The “baguette de tradition française” is made from wheat flour, water, yeast, and common salt. They may include whole-wheat flour or other grains such as rye. Baguettes are closely connected to France, though they are made worldwide. Another tubular-shaped loaf is known as a flûte, also known in the United States as a parisienne. Flûtes closely resemble baguettes but are about twice the size. UK, referred to using the English translation French stick. None of these are officially defined, either legally or, for instance, in major dictionaries, any more than the baguette.